Memories...
Click here for part 1 Click here for Part 2 Click here for Part 3 |
For more photos of 9/11 and the days that followed, click here.
For most people, September 11, 2001, was one terrible day almost four years ago at this writing. For New Yorkers, though, and of course for the families of victims and others directly affected, it went on for months, years. Although I'm a very calm person, to this day an unexpected loud noise makes me jump out of my skin.
A couple of hours after I walked in the door of my apartment, the phone calls started. I sent a blanket e-mail to everyone in my address book to let them know I was OK, but it would be days before some of my relatives in Australia would be able to reach me, because the overseas phone lines were choked. In the meantime, almost everyone I'd ever known called me. One call was from a co-worker - people at the office were calling lists of their fellow employees to track everyone down. As I said earlier, only one person from my firm died, and one person from my building.
That afternoon, in the absence of public transport, my niece's husband rode a bicycle most of the length of Manhattan to collect his son from school, then all the way home again with him.
Still in my mind's eye
There are many images in my mind's eye from the following weeks and months.
Going to Chinatown on the following Friday, the first day the subways were working again, and seeing the half-built booths of the San Gennaro festival scheduled to start that weekend, abandoned and empty.
We returned to work the following Monday in our "new" office - 900 people in an office designed for 300 - with a big get-together at a nearby hotel. The room was jammed - boxes of tissues on every table, everybody hugging and crying, over and over again. Some people chose not to come back at all, and some took periods of time off before and after returning. We were provided with extensive counseling, and the weeks and months went by slowly.
The entire city was papered in "Missing" posters. Every wall, every phone booth, every surface - thousands and thousands of faces and names. Outside the morgue, which I had passed on my way home, was a wall of faces. And in the street alongside, a white tent city - the temporary morgue, which would be there for many months as people worked day and night to identify the dead.
A block from my (new) office, a fire station had lost several members. Outside, people left bouquets of flowers and hundreds of messages. Every few days, someone would take away the dying flowers, and more would be left the next day.
Union Square, a green park best known for the big farmer's market that gathers there four days a week, became a semi-official memorial. The winding paths were lined with "fences" of cloth, and taped or pinned to them were more posters, plus messages, poems, memories of people who had gone to work that morning and never come back. Hundreds of people had lit candles and left them at the south end of the park - the ground was covered with layer upon layer of melted wax. And people stood there, staring, crying, holding each other. Hundreds, thousands of people, day and night, crying.
"Ground Zero" was unreal by comparison, at least the first few weeks. As I said in part 1, the blackened skeleton of the World Trade Center was blocked off and inaccessible, to be viewed only from a distance. People stood staring, applauding the firefighters and other volunteers as they left the destruction to take a break. We made several visits, the first only a couple of weeks after 9/11, another a couple of months later, then another when we walked around the entire site, down to the waterfront, back through Battery Park City, and said goodbye.
The nearby St. Paul's Chapel became a shelter for the volunteers, and now has a permanent exhibit honoring 9/11. If you're in the area, it's worth a visit.
I had a conversation with another survivor. She was a flight attendant on the next United Airlines flight, and her fiance was in his office in the World Trade Center. They had a joke about waving to each other each morning as her plane would pass the building. She didn't know if he had escaped, and he didn't know if the plane that hit the building was hers. She had to get from La Guardia to Manhattan - someone gave her a ride to the Triborough Bridge, and from there she walked, in her working shoes, with heels. The bridge and its approaches make up several miles, and I once said to Steve, "Every time I cross it, I think of her. Can you imagine walking across this bridge?" He said, "It's not as far as you walked." "Oh."
A fellow member of my qi jong class worked in the Federal Building and lived in Brooklyn. She walked home that day across the Brooklyn Bridge, as many other of my co-workers did. Then she went back to work in the devastated lower Manhattan. When she found some months later that she had breast cancer, she wondered if it had to do with working in the poisoned environment, walking through the layer of dust and debris, breathing the air.
"Don't tell me I'm lucky"
I mentioned the "celebrity factor" earlier. We all learned how uncomfortable it could be. The horrified look, followed by an awkward silence. Sometimes some surprising reactions - anger, criticism. Someone once lambasted me in an online because, "whistling past the graveyard," I said that I now had to buy new shoes because all my office shoes were in my desk drawer. (A co-worker left nine pairs behind!) The online correspondent was furious that I didn't appreciate how lucky I was. I said, "You were even luckier, you were in Canada," but she didn't get it.
Of course I appreciated that I was alive when so many weren't. It lasted a few days, then I began to realize what I had lost. Somebody at work once said, "They keep telling me I'm lucky, but I don't feel lucky. If my house had burned down, would they tell me I was lucky?"
Others backed me up in the online conversation, by the way. To some, the idea that all my shoes were left in my desk drawer brought home the reality of the people whose lives were affected in other ways. (When I went to buy new ones a week or so later, the sales clerk said, "You're the fourth today.")
Rudy Giuliani
The day before September 11, Mayor Rudy Giuliani was a bit of a has-been. In the years he had been in office, he had worked miracles cleaning up the city, making it safe, clean and beautiful. But he'd pretty much run out of things to do, and his attempt to stop people jaywalking had fallen flat. His messy divorce didn't help.
Then came September 11. "Rudy" stood in front of the press and brought the city together. They called him "America's mayor", and we loved him. His strength held us together as people searched for their loved ones, and the city wept for them. He attended funerals and memorial services, sometimes three or four a day. And, somehow, he kept going until the city found itself again.
There is a tree-lighting festival held each December on the Upper East Side. Hundreds of people gather outside the church that sponsors the lights on the trees down Park Avenue. In 2001, we joined the crowd, and sang traditional carols in the street. Then the church minister made a little speech, and introduced the man sitting quietly on the platform behind him, hidden by the podium. When the crowd recognized Rudy Giuliani, they went crazy, applauding wildly, calling his name, "Rudy, Rudy, Rudy!"
Eventually, Rudy handed over the office to Michael Bloomberg, married Judy Nathan, and retired, at least for now, from New York politics. But he holds a place in every New Yorker's heart.
Healing came
Eventually, things got better. We began to smile again. One day, I remember a flash of memory about the banks of spring flowers in the World Trade Center plaza. That was all. No tears, no sadness, just pleasure at remembering the flowers. And I knew we were healing.
One day, Steve and I dropped into a local bar, and saw something wonderful - a TV with a football game on. (And we don't even like football.) For the first time in months, something other than the daily news reports of 9/11 was on TV. And we knew life was returning to normal.
July 4th, 2002, the first Independence Day celebration after 9/11, was an amazing event. In the local bar where we went to watch the fireworks with friends, people saluted the flag, sang along with "America the Beautiful," and laughed with joy and pride. The city wasn't back to normal yet, but it was returning.
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